Valentin Garvie, Argentina
Trumpet
Valentin was born in 1973 in Mar del Plata, a popular summer resort on the Atlantic coast of Argentina. Between the ages of four and ten his family lived in England where at eight, he started lessons on the trumpet at his local primary school. But the trumpet had been a presence from well before that. His father, psychoanalyst by profession, is a passionate Jazz trumpet/cornet player and the sounds of his New Orleans and later, more far out bands had been hammering on his son's head from the beginning. Valentin's first concerts were with the Junior Band of the Borough of Waltham Forest.
His family moved back to Mar del Plata in 1984 and Valentin enjoyed a normal life that included more football than trumpet, but soon after he started music lessons with Marcelo Perticone a composer who was a neighbor and friend of the family. Marcelo gave him his first exposure to contemporary music and took Valentin to Buenos Aires, four hundred kilometers north specially to see a certain group called Ensemble Modern, which was touring South America in 1992.
Valentin recalls vividly thinking how nice it would be (though impossible...) to play in such a group. He also remembers the panache with which former Ensemble Modern trumpeter Bill Forman brushed off street characters while strolling around Florida, the pedestrian street of Buenos Aires before the concert. At the age of nineteen Valentin moved to Buenos Aires to study Orchestral Conducting at Universidad Catolica Argentina. He now looked forward to a more academic degree in music. At this time he was playing trombone with his fathers eclectic jazz group "Viva Buddy Bolden". On his move to Buenos Aires he started trumpet lessons with Rafael Morelli, who helped him develop his technique and regain motivation for the trumpet. Valentin then starts a period that would end up being very musically eclectic.
By 1998 he was playing as first trumpet with Orquesta Academica del Teatro Colon (Argentina's foremost youth orchestra) working occasionally with the major symphony orchestras of Buenos Aires, filarmonica de Buenos Aires, Orquesta Estable del Teatro Colon and Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional, playing trombone with a Dixieland marching band for gigs, playing trumpet with other Jazz bands, playing the Cornetto (Zink) in Historic Performance groups (he was the only cornetto player in the country at the time), teaching trombone, trumpet, aural skills and conducting, playing with Quinteto del Buen Aire, a brass quintet devoted to arrangements of Tangos, conducting and playing in Temperley Posaunenchor, a German style Brass Band, playing in Ensembles XXI, a new contemporary music group, amongst other things while at the same time completing his University Degree. He then obtained a scholarship for a two-year postgraduate course in trumpet at the Royal Academy of Music in London. His main teachers were Howard Snell and John Wallace. At the Academy he obtained various Solo Brass prizes. He was also awarded on graduation the Principal's Prize "for an outstanding overall student". In London he played frequently with London Sinfonietta. He has been a member of Ensemble Modern since March 2002.